


Ripples

by Haldane



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haldane/pseuds/Haldane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. John Watson has not one, but two medical practices.  Only one makes any money.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripples

Dr. John Watson has not one, but two medical practices. Only one makes any money.

Three evenings a week - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - a cab stops at his door at 8 o'clock. He never has to shout or whistle for it, and he never needs to give an address. He gets in with one medical bag, or often two, and away they go. The cabbie never charges, either. That would be close to sacrilege.

Dr. Watson's _proper_ medical practice makes very little money. He doesn't care; he has no friends, no wife, no children, and sees no point in putting anyway anything for 'later'. What funds do come in are mainly spent on supporting his other practice.

The cab goes to an unmentionable street in an unmentionable district. Watson enters, and sees if anything needs straightening up from last time. There's usually a bucket of water handy, not very clean, but better than nothing, so he scrubs the plank table that is the only item of furniture.

There's only the one room, so as people file in they sit silently along the wall. There is no privacy, but to these people privacy is an alien concept, like enough food or a warm room in the wintertime. Watson takes them in turn, asks what questions he needs to, and does what he can.

Sometimes it's nothing. The man with both legs crushed under a wagon, or the whore bleeding from a botched abortion; for these he can do nothing. But everybody knows he tries. Now and again he saves one, such as the young girl with a broken leg from a tumble down some stairs. 

Dr. Watson's house is perhaps the safest place in London. No cracker or sneakthief would dare touch it. The brass plate with his name has never been wrenched off of the door for the value of the metal. This has happened three times to his neighbour.

For over two years Watson works at being 'good'. His circumscribed life goes around and around, but never forwards. He works at being patient. It won't last forever; he's drawing from a limited store.

One Sunday morning he wakes with the knowledge that there is no reason for him to get to the end of the day. If it had been a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday he just might have continued in order to spend another evening trying to make a difference, but it isn't. He takes his revolver from its place in the drawer, and walks the distance to the cemetery that has a plain grey marker inscribed 'Holmes'. 

In order to make as little mess as possible, he lays on his left side on the ground, and then shoots himself through the right temple. He's always been neat and careful; he doesn't get it wrong now.

Upper-class London never notices. Middle-class London sends a tiny group of people to stand by the body as it is buried, and then closes around the void left by his absence without a ripple. Lower-class London doesn't bother with the funeral, and nobody has thought to notify them anyway. They're sorry he's gone, but death is something they face every day and while there is regret there's no surprise.

Six years later, the girl with the broken leg has a son, and she calls him John. Against all odds, he survives.


End file.
